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Friday, June 21, 2013

Audio: The Waste Land Read by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins

I must tell the
world about this recording.It’s a BBC
production of T.S. Eliot’s famous poem, The
Waste Land read by Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins.It is not only the
best reading of The Waste Land that I
have ever heard—and I’ve heard a few—but it might be the best reading of any
poem of considerable length that I have ever heard.Run, don’t walk, to this BBC site
and, not just listen to, right click and save the recording to your
computer.I don’t know how long the BBC
will keep this available to the general public.Many of their recordings become CDs that you will have to purchase.If you have an interest in literature, you
will want this forever.

Second, read along with this hyper linked with split screen
notes, internet posting of The Waste Land.One of the things that make this poem hard to
understand is the many cultural and literary allusions, both explicit and
furtive, that lend meaning to the line and to the larger themes.The notes and hyper links help identify and clarify
the allusions.

The Waste Land (readthe Wikipedia entry) is the single most important poem in English (possibly in
the world but I can’t speak for other languages) of the 20th
century.I’m not going to expound on the
poem here.I’ll save that for next year (my
readings have already been planned for this year) where I plan to post several detailed
blogs that will provide my thoughts and understanding of the poem.For now, let me say that the poem emerged
from the horror that took Europe from World War I (the poem was written in 1922
but was worked on for several years prior), the culture (especially the loss of
religious faith) that developed during and as a result of the war, and the
fragmentation from the western historical identity.WWI became a fracture point between modernism
and a historical past.

The introduction provided by poets Jackie Kay, Matthew Hollis,
Sean O’Brien and the former Arch Bishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, is
interesting, though not all that penetrating.Several points they bring up may need a little elucidation.One is the motif of multiple voices within
the poem.The multiple voices is the key
aesthetic of the poem and reflects the theme of fragmentation, the apparent lack
of coherence.When a work of art’s aesthetics
are integral to the theme, that’s when greatness is achieved.No one did it better than Dante in The Divine Comedy and why I consider
that the single greatest work of literature ever produced.But Eliot does it here too.I would say that Eliot is the Dante Alighieri
of the 20th century.

Another obscure point in the introduction is the reference
to the poets Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams in relationship to The Waste Land.Ezra Pound, also a great and influential
modernist poet, was Eliot’s friend, and he edited the original Waste Land
manuscript.He didn’t add any lines, but
he did cut a lot of extraneous passages that clarified and crystallized the
poem.The original manuscript would not
have been the great poem it has turned out to be, and Eliot recognized it.The poem is dedicated to Pound: “For Ezra
Pound/il miglior
fabbro” (Italian
for “the better craftsman”).

The
William Carlos Williams reference is harder to explain.He too is a great modernist poet, but he
hated (and that’s not too strong a word) Eliot’s style and a lesser degree his
themes.Williams, who wrote in the Walt
Whitman tradition of poetry, was a very harsh critic of Eliot.The allusions and the heavily cultural
identity of Eliot’s poetry was anathema to Williams.By the way, the other great poet of the early
modernist period, Wallace Stevens, kind of splits the difference from the Eliot
(with Pound)/Williams spectrum of modernist style.There must be a book on the relationships
between Eliot, Pound, Carlos Williams, and Stevens—the four great modernist
poets, all Americans by the way—but if there isn’t it would make for a great
PhD thesis.I think I would explore that
myself if I were to ever go for a PhD.[Disclosure: I do have a Master’s Degree in English Literature.]

What was
remarkably missing from the BBC introduction was pointing out how central to
the poem is sexuality.The crisis of
modernity, as portrayed in the poem, is the severing of sexuality with the
divine.The operative word is sterility,
sexuality without love, without birth, without regeneration.So much of the poem deals, both direct and implicit, with
an unholy sexuality that has resulted from that severed relationship.Loose sexuality, meaningless and loveless sexuality,
abortion, rape all figure in the poem.The several song allusions scattered about the poem are from songs of
his day that had sexual innuendo of a vulgar nature.Would Eliot, with today’s sexual music, today’s
hookup culture, today’s millions of abortions, feel he was prescient or be further
shocked?I don’t know.We are still in a waste land.

Let me
give a couple of my favorite passages.This passage is a voice that I take to be that of God speaking:

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish?Son of man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

Aheap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the deadtree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of
dust.

(ll. 19-30)

And
then towards the end, the rain over the wasteland finally comes in a redemptive
baptism of water:

A woman drew her long black hair out tight

And fiddled whisper music on those strings

And bats with baby faces in the violet light

Whistled, and beat their wings

And crawled head downward down a blackened wall

And upside down in air were towers

Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.

In this decayed hole among the mountains

In the faint moonlight, the grass is singing

Over the tumbled graves, about the chapel

There is the empty chapel, only the wind's home.

It has no windows, and the door swings,

Drybones can harm no one.

Only a cock stood on the rooftree

Co co rico co co rico

In a flash of lightning.Then a damp gust

Bringing rain

(ll.377-94)

Listen to Jeremy Irons and Eileen Atkins perform the poem.I was skeptical before hearing it that two
voices, a man’s and a woman’s, would sound correct.After listening to it, I think for many
reasons it’s inspired.I can’t rave
enough about it.